Scarcity mindsets and abundance mindsets

It’s possible to have a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset with regard to various things — which is linked to, but not the same as, how abundant or scarce that thing actually is for you.

The obvious things this applies to are money, time, and energy. It can also apply to creativity, social interaction, sex, nice weather (whatever that means to you), possessions (as distinct from money, because money is not the only limiting factor on acquiring possessions), space in your home, etc.

Note that I’m not saying an abundance mindset is always better. I’m certainly not saying that it doesn’t matter how scarce a thing actually is and that if you just cultivate an abundance mindset everything will be fine. Having an abundance mindset with regard to money if money is actually scarce is usually unwise and dangerous. I’m not sure whether the same is true of time and energy; while destitution and bankruptcy are clearly caused by an objective lack of money regardless of mindset, I’m not sure whether burnout is caused by an objective lack of time and energy (so you’d be more at risk if you thought you had more than you did) or whether it’s caused by the feeling of not having enough (so an abundance mindset might be protective to some extent).

Sometimes the mindset tracks the reality but with a lag, so someone who used to be poor and is now rich might still have a scarcity mindset about money, and vice versa. The lag could be weeks or years. If you take on more commitments, you might still feel like you have plenty of time for a while until the reality catches up with you. If you retire, you might retain a sense of “I’m not sure I can fit that into my busy schedule” for a while until you adjust. If your financial situation fluctuates a lot, your mindset with regard to money might trail it by a few weeks.

Your scarcity or abundance mindset might affect your attitude to gaining the thing, or to losing/spending the thing, or both. For money it’s likely to be both: with a scarcity mindset you might jump at chances to earn extra money and also be very cautious about spending it, whereas with an abundance mindset you might let earning opportunities pass by and also spend it liberally. (I’m trying to use value-neutral language. Of course you could say “stingily” versus “generously”, or, conversely, “wisely” versus “wastefully”.) As for time, there’s proverbially no way to get more, so the mindset only applies to how cautiously or liberally you spend it, and how much it bothers you when it’s wasted. With social interaction or sex, getting is the same as giving, so the person with a scarcity mindset who accepts every opportunity they get because they don’t know when there might be another one might seem more “generous” than the person with an abundance mindset who choosily turns down opportunities because they have plenty. (Here I mean social interaction in the sense of opportunities to interact socially if you want to. An introvert feeling drained from an oversupply of social interaction I would put in a different category: a scarcity of energy or “social battery” or “spoons”, rather than an abundance of social interaction. Throughout this post I’m using “abundance” to mean “as much as I want, and this is good”, not “too much in a bad way”.)

I think, with regard to creativity specifically, an abundance mindset is wholly good, because creative output often breeds more creative output (“priming the pump”; maybe strengthening certain neural pathways) rather than exhausting a limited supply. I’ve never heard of anyone wishing they hadn’t written(/painted/composed) X because now they don’t have enough creativity left to write Y (even though it’s common to regret spending money/time/energy on X because now you don’t have enough left for Y). But it’s easy to feel like the supply of creativity is limited; like you shouldn’t put all your ideas into this work (book, poem, song, painting, etc) because you want to save some for a future work, or to feel like now you’ve written something you need to guard it jealously and try to get it published for as much money as possible rather than just getting it out there.